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Karnataka’s culinary heritage is marked by shorter cooking time and preparation than their other traditional counterparts while cutting on onion-garlic combo but it undoubtedly leads the way in healthy and distinctly flavourful cooking. The Kannada dish, Kadle Manoli proves the point too. An uncomplicated sabzi, it’s made with chickpeas and ivy gourd making it nutritious enough for health enthusiasts and as tantalising and satiating for the taste-seeking food lovers. Ivy gourds that are lightly tempered with mustard seeds and curry leaves and flavoured with jaggery and salt transform into a dry and mouthful sabzi with the tropical masala paste of coconut and red chillies.
Let’s acquaint ourselves with the name of the dish first, which is a combination of the Tulu word Kadle which means black chickpeas, and Manoli meaning ivy gourds or tindly. The dish is famously considered to be a part of Mangalorean cuisine. It is prepared on special occasions including marriages. The veg bowl just uses a coarse coconut-based ground masala to lightly flavour and perk up everything.
Ivy Gourd is locally known by multiple names across different states. It’s called Tindora in Hindi, Kundru in Tondli in Marathi, Kunduri in Oriya, Kovakkai in Tamil and Dondakaya in Telugu. This tropical plant is a perennial herbaceous vine that belongs to the pumpkin family. A person unknown to the vegetable may find it closely resembling Parwal or pointed gourd. Ivy gourd is widely cultivated in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia including Thailand. Thailand even classifies it as a herb and ayurvedic medicine. The vegetable has been used in traditional medicine for treating leprosy, fever, asthma, bronchitis and jaundice. Besides this, this vegetable has high amounts of beta-carotene, Vitamin A and Vitamin C.
Preparation time: 40 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Servings: 2-3
Ingredients:
- 3 cups tindly (tondekayi)
- 1 tbsp oil
- ½ tsp mustard seeds
- ½ tsp white lentils
- A few curry leaves
- 2 broken red chillies
- ¼ tsp turmeric powder
- 1 ½ tsp salt
- A small piece of jaggery
For the masala paste:
- ½ cup coconut
- ½ tsp mustard seeds
- 2-3 red chillies
Method:
- Cook the chickpeas in a pressure cooker for up to 3 whistles.
- Take them out and set them aside.
- In a pan, heat oil, and add mustard seeds, white lentils, red chillies, and curry leaves.
- Let everything exude aroma and splutter a little.
- Then add sliced Manolis or tindly into it and stir a little.
- Add jaggery, salt and turmeric powder.
- Saute for 3-4 minutes.
- Then, cover with a lid and cook for 10-15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, in a blender add grated coconut, red chilli and mustard seeds and grind them into a coarse mixture.
- Do not add any water to it while blending.
- After 10 minutes, remove the lid from the pan in which the tindly is being cooked and add the cooked chickpeas to it.
- Mix everything well and let it cook for 5 minutes after covering the lid.
- After 5 minutes, add the ground masala into the pan, mix everything well and saute for 2 minutes. Turn off the flame.
- Eat it with rice and dal.
